Dental Talent Blog

Dental Practices are having to find new and innovative methods of enabling operations to continue with as little disruption as possible when they fully reopen. But when it comes to the recruitment process is it realistic to think that it’s business as usual? It hasn’t taken many businesses long to replace traditional face to face interviews with video. For many industries, particularly hospitality and high street retail, these are trying times to say the least. But for other sectors including Dentistry, there is an urgent need to still recruit talented professionals.

The average time to hire in the UK is 28.5 days if employers who are looking to recruit wait until their practice is fully open, the delays could have a significant impact on those practices who are not ahead of the game.

Dental practices who are in a position to do so, need to continue with a selective recruitment process, enabling them to focus on only interviewing the best applicants or at the very least have a bank of suitable applicants ready and waiting for a face to face interview when the pandemic ends.

Recruitment doesn’t have to come to a halt, technology can enable you to continue the recruitment and selection process, it can even help you to save time and avoid those costly mistake hires by adopting varied selection methods.

Online pre-employment skills, knowledge and psychometric testing is a way to reduce the risk of a poor hire, and save you time from having to interview applicants who don’t meet the required standards. Psychometric testing is a useful tool, that can be used for all roles, to help you to understand how aspects of an individual’s behavioural style will affect their performance at work.

Video interviewing is an obvious way to reduce the risks of face-to-face interviews, but how do you start implementing the process?

When it comes to video software you’re not short of options – from established providers such as Zoom and Skype to the apps on our mobile phones such as Google Hangouts (Android) and FaceTime (Apple/iOS).

Dental Talent’s tips for conducting video interviews include:

Ensure you’re in a quiet location, with as little distractions as possible.

Lighting is key – if you have a window with bright sunshine behind you, the interviewee won’t be able to see your face, so try to ensure you’re facing towards any windows or lights.

Test the quality of the video and the sound with a colleague first to ensure there are no issues, make sure this is done well in advance.

Dress appropriately and don’t assume you only show your top half, you may need to get something and the interviewee doesn’t want to see your pajama bottoms!

Again as with a conventional interview, be on time, we would suggest getting online 5 minutes early to mitigate any last minute technical issues.

Ensure your username is professional, default usernames might be taken from your social media for example when you login.

Try not to type any notes during the video interview, as the noise from typing will be louder than you think and may distract the interviewee.

Hands are key to communicating with body language – so make sure your hands are in view and not just your face.

Use post-it notes with questions and place them on your screen – these can be useful cue cards to ensure you look professional and don’t forget any questions you had prepared.

Be conscious of your body movements – the microphone can pick up even the smallest of noises, so even normal movements such as shifting your weight in your chair can be distracting.

Finish by thanking the interviewer as you would in a face to face interview. We would also suggest a follow up thank you email 24hrs later too, try and make it relevant and personal, remember, people buy people!

As the return to work situation continues to unfold, dental practices can use the tools they have at their disposal to mitigate the impact. Dental Talent has seen a 400% uplift in traffic to the site over the last two weeks – perhaps now is the time to advertise your vacancy to have the best team ready for your patients!

Practices/Employers

Dental Talent – Online Recruitment, in association with The British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry puts dental practices in direct contact with the best candidates by giving their recruitment campaign huge visibility to thousands of active and passive job seekers comprehensively advertising across multiple platforms, searching CV databases therefore cutting out recruitment agencies.

Candidates

Search for your next job in dentistry through Dental Talent, in association with The British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. All jobs on Dental Talent – Online Recruitment are advertised directly by independent practices or dental corporates. There are no recruitment agencies advertising jobs, so you are in control of where your CV is sent. Apply instantly for a specific role, make multiple applications quickly and never miss an opportunity by receiving relevant job alerts.